1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a culture microscope apparatus to observe living cells that have been kept alive under a constant environmental condition for long-term observation of cells of living organisms such as animals or plants.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, in such fields as biochemistry, living cells of animals or plants are kept alive under a suitable condition to observe behavior of the living cells for functional analysis of living organisms.
For the behavioral observation of living cells, fluorescent dyes using antigen antibody reactions and fluorescent observation using gene-transferred fluorescent protein are utilized. The fluorescent observation is used because it enables observation on the molecular level and behavioral observation of distributions and molecules. It is to be noted here that the fluorescence is a phenomenon in which if energy such as ultraviolet rays is applied to a substance from the outside, atoms of the substance transit from ground state to excited state and then emit specific light when returning to the ground state. The ultraviolet rays from the outside are generally called excitation light.
On the other hand, there is a phenomenon called discoloration in which if the fluorescent dyes and the fluorescent protein are continuously exposed to the excitation light, the intensity of fluorescence light is gradually lowered or nullified. Therefore, the fluorescent observation requires attention, for example, using as weak excitation light as possible and exposing a sample to the excitation light during observation only.